Delta plan to get cost benefit analysis

Saturday

Dec 1, 2012 at 12:01 AM

State water officials announced this week that they intend to undertake a cost-benefit study of a controversial, multibillion-dollar plan to transport water from Sierra Nevada snowmelt around the Delta and send it south.

Scott Smith

State water officials announced this week that they intend to undertake a cost-benefit study of a controversial, multibillion-dollar plan to transport water from Sierra Nevada snowmelt around the Delta and send it south.

This appears to be an about-face for state officials, who have long opposed the study. A spokesman for California's Natural Resources Agency on Friday downplayed the shifting position as an effort to be responsive to the project's critics.

"I wish I could say this is a huge step," agency spokesman Richard Stapler said. "This is a step in the process."

In January, the state expects to lay out the scope of the analysis, which might be completed at the earliest in the spring.

Gov. Jerry Brown backs the proposed $14 billion project - called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan - which would siphon water past the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and down to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California residents.

Communities that abut the Delta, such as Stockton, have staunchly opposed the project, fearing that less water coming into the estuary would cause a backwash of ocean saltwater, destroying rich farmland.

These Delta advocates have pushed - so far with no success - for a full analysis of the social, environmental and financial costs of the project.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, in October proposed a bill in Congress to force the study after a similar bill by state Assemblyman Bill Berryhill, R-Stockton, failed to pass earlier this year.

Jerry Meral, deputy secretary for the state's Natural Resources Agency, announced the cost-benefit analysis in a finance committee meeting Thursday. David Sunding, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will lead the study.

University of the Pacific economist Jeff Michael said he was cautiously optimistic that the state would properly execute it. A cost-benefit analysis such as this often produces the result the authors desire, he said.

"They gave an indication that they were very open and interested in feedback to make sure they covered everything," Michael said of state officials. "It's a reversal for an agency denying they need to do this for a long time."

The Delta estuary supports dozens of species inland, and the ecosystem extends to fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Stockton-based Restore the Delta and an outspoke critic of the proposed water conveyances.

Responding to comments from the Natural Resources Agency spokesman Stapler, Barrigan-Parrilla said she feared that officials were not committed to a thorough analysis.

"That indicates they are not planning on doing it fully and adequately," she said. "They're not committed to do an analysis with the deep thinking and science it deserves."